left in formation if they broke away
in search of vengeance. He also ordered the _Black Star_ and the
_Sun Goddess_ to shepherd the lightly armed and troop-crammed
Gilgamesh freighter out of danger. The two clumps of Dunnan-Makann
ships were converging rapidly, and Alvyn Karffard was screaming into
a phone to somebody to get more speed.

At a thousand miles, the missiles started going out, and the two
groups of ships, four and five, were equidistant from each other and
from the allied fleet, at the points of a triangle that was growing
smaller by the second. The first fire-globes of intercepted missiles
spread from their seeds of brief white light. A red light flashed on
the damage-board. An enemy ship took a hit. The captain of the
_Queen Flavia_ was on a screen, saying that his ship was heavily
damaged. Three ships bearing the Mardukan dragon-and-planet circled
madly around each other at what looked, in the screen, like just
over pistol-range, two of them firing into the third, which was
replying desperately. The third one blew up, and somebody was
yelling out of a screenspeaker, "Scratch one traitor!"

Another ship blew up somewhere, and then another. He heard somebody
say, "There went one of ours," and wondered which one it was. Not
the _Corisande_, he hoped; no, it wasn't, he could see her rushing
after two other ships which were, in turn, speeding toward the
_Black Star_, the _Sun Goddess_ and the Gilgamesh freighter. Then
the _Nemesis_ and the _Starhopper_ were within gun-range, pounding
each other savagely.

The battle had tied itself into a ball of gyrating, fire-spitting
ships that went rolling toward the planet, which was swinging in and
out of the main viewscreen and growing rapidly larger. By the time
they were down to the inner edge of the exosphere, the ball had
started to unwind, ship after ship dropping out of it and going
into orbit, some badly damaged and some going to attack damaged
enemies. Some of them were completely around the planet, hidden
by it. He saw three ships approaching _Corisande_, _Sun Goddess_,
and the Gilgamesher. He got Harkaman on the screen.

"Where's the _Black Star_?" he asked.

"Gone to Em-See-Square," Harkaman replied. "We got the two
Dunnan-Makanns. _Bolide_ and _Reliable_."

Then young Steven of Ravary, who had been monitoring one of the
intership screens, had a call from Captain Gompertz of the
_Grendelsbane_, and at the same moment somebody else was yelling,
"Here